After being away from the house since then, I left for work this morning at 7am to find that the strongest hive, and only the strongest one, had a huge number of bees clustered on the front of the hive, above the entrance reducer.

Any ideas why on earth they would do this?

Other items to note about this hive.

1) This hive still has some brood developing in it.2) This hive was SO full of bees and honey that I left it stacked three deeps high.3) As with the above items, when I finished medicating all the hives, I found this hive had a very large number of drones in the colony.

Anonymous

My first thoughts would be that since the hive is still extremely populated and there is no nectar around to gather, the foragers just don't have anything to do and they're just hsnging around.I'm surprised that as far north as you are that the hive still has any drones in it. My hives evicted their drones two weeks ago.

After being away from the house since then, I left for work this morning at 7am to find that the strongest hive, and only the strongest one, had a huge number of bees clustered on the front of the hive, above the entrance reducer.

Any ideas why on earth they would do this?

Other items to note about this hive.

1) This hive still has some brood developing in it.2) This hive was SO full of bees and honey that I left it stacked three deeps high.3) As with the above items, when I finished medicating all the hives, I found this hive had a very large number of drones in the colony.

Any thoughts on this? anything else I should look for or do? :?:

I look what in the hell is Connecticut? - Opposite direction, I thought because climate seems to cold at winter. Your temperature is just now 32 F = 0C

This kind of medicating does not affect that kind of behaviour. 3 deep is much. How many you had in summer time?

In Finland I put my hives under protection of earth construction textile. It is white and sun doe not affect like in black tar paper. I do it in December when snow covers the earth.

What is your ventilation? How big is the entrance? Do you have middle openings? But why it come out if it was before? - tar odour?

In Finland the knowledge is that opening must be wide at winter, but grid against mice.

The hive has a small bottom entrance and middle and a small top entrance too, but these are now behind the tar (roofing) paper.

The sun can warm the paper and it does inner climate warm. When hive is agressive, it may be disturbed because of odour. In polar circle of Finland it was today 7C = 45F warm. Bees come out in this weather.

But ,do not believe that agressive are good honey makers. I have calm hives and they bring 100 - 300 lbs honey per hive, and give no stings like all kind of hybrids. My aim is to get 3 deep and 4 low supers for honey. The extreme case 3 deep + 6 low supers is not good, but you must stand everything

I did treat with menthol. In fact (and as a paramedic I should probably know better) because of the large size of this hive, I used the one extra bag of menthol that I had in this hive so it has a little extra.

I assume that I should remove the bag or bags of menthol since that appears that it may be bothering my girls.

Hi Finman: Menthol, also called peppermint camphor, is a crystalline organic compound with a strong, minty, cooling odour and taste obtained for centuries from the oil of the Japanese mint; it is used in cigarettes, cosmetics, and flavourings. It belongs to the isoprenoid family, the empirical formula being C10H20O. It has also bee found to be useful in the control of mites.

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"Where the bee sucks, there suck I." William Shakespeare: The Tempest.

Anonymous

According to the bee Bee Research Lab in Beltsville, Md. the menthol is most effective against tracheal mites when used in the hives when the daytime temperatures are in the 70's.It seems to be a little late in the year to be using it.A good method for winter control of tracheal mites is to put grease patties on top of the brood frames.

The "Dummies" book has a method of applying menthol that's supposed to be less dependent on temperature for effectiveness. It involves dissolving the menthol in a little bit of warm vegetable oil and saturating paper towels with the solution. Then place the towels in the hive above the brood and replace them every 2 to 4 weeks.

The "Dummies" book has a method of applying menthol that's supposed to be less dependent on temperature for effectiveness. It involves dissolving the menthol in a little bit of warm vegetable oil and saturating paper towels with the solution. Then place the towels in the hive above the brood and replace them every 2 to 4 weeks.

I've seen the paper towel method on other websites, but I've never tried it myself. I thought you were using the regular menthol bag method.

Yes, I have a 1/3 cup of methol pellets in a mesh bag in my hive. I am somewhat concerned that the proper amount of menthol isn't evaporating, due to it getting cooler sooner than I expected. So any alternative that wouldn't be so temperature dependant could be good, I'd think. Then again, grease patties are always available, too. Just seeing which might be more effective, for future reference.

I've seen the paper towel method on other websites, but I've never tried it myself. I thought you were using the regular menthol bag method.

Yes, I have a 1/3 cup of methol pellets in a mesh bag in my hive. I am somewhat concerned that the proper amount of menthol isn't evaporating, due to it getting cooler sooner than I expected. So any alternative that wouldn't be so temperature dependant could be good, I'd think. Then again, grease patties are always available, too. Just seeing which might be more effective, for future reference.

-- Kris

Do you know that you have tracheal mites?

Have you brood deases? (= terramycin)

You use quite a lot medicin.

I give terramycin with spray bottle on the brood area, if there is deases. Otherwise not. I have told that if hive does not have larvas, terramysin is vain.

In Finland tracheal mite is rare.

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Anonymous

I'm afraid I just don't understand the hesitancy of beekeepers to use medications in their hives. Antibiotics (Terramycin in particular) will not hurt bees and I don't understand why someone would be unwilling to use a preventive measure to prevent a nasty disease (foulbrood) in their hives. Our local beekeepers association had a combination meeting and hive inspection about 3 weeks ago. We held it at a member's apiary so that the state inspector could open up his 5 hives and show everyone the proper methods of inspecting and manipulating a hive. Lo and behold, all five hives had foulbrood in them. Four of them were beyond saving and the poor beekeeper had to destroy everything in them with fire. The fifth one had just a little bit of foulbrood in it (probably because it was only placed there 2 weeks ago) and the inspector assured the guy that proper treatment with terramycin could save it. The inspector told us that two years ago the state went into stores throughout the state and bought honey from over 2000 locations. The honey was tested and EVERY sample had foulbrood spore in it. The point being that foulbrood spore is everywhere and is capable of flaring up in your apiary anytime the hives are stressed for any reason. I for one would much rather spend 50 cents per hive to treat my bees than to have to destroy them because I was too cheap or lazy to treat them properly. In the state of Pennsylvania during the winter of 2003-2004 beekeepers lost almost 50% of their hives.

Do we have a lot of tracheal mites in Pa? I honestly don't know. But I do know that since they are too small to see and you need a microscope to find them I'm not going to take any chances by not using preventative measures.

As George Imirie says, are you going to be a beehaver or a beekeeper? If you have to replace a large number of bees every year, or you loose a lot of bees due to not manageing your bees properly and having them either die or swarm away into the wild blue yonder, then according to him you are a beehaver and not a beekeeper.